A user of a picture archival and control system (PACS) workstation may use a high resolution monitor to view a high resolution grayscale image acquired by an imaging device. A user may also desire other functionality in the PACS workstation that does not require high resolution. For instance, a user may need to view a color image (such as US (ultrasound) images, NM (nuclear medicine) images, PET (positron emission tomography) images, etc.) or a hybrid image (such as PET-CT images) acquired by an imaging device. A user may workflow specific application that is not an image (dictation, 3D rendering, etc.) or a non-workflow related application (internet, word processing, e-mail, etc.).
To meet these needs, a site typically purchases and configures workstations, separate from the work stations connected to high resolution monitors, with low resolution monitors. These low resolution workstations may be useful for meeting the additional requirements, but are less useful for the viewing of high resolution grayscale images such as x-ray images. Thus, a workstation that can accommodate both high resolution and low resolution monitors in the same workstation would be preferable.
On a multiple monitor system in which all monitors are configured to a single resolution, all components and fonts painted on the screen appear uniform in size and scale. On a mixed monitor system, a system with both high resolution and low resolution images, the resolution of all monitors may be different. This is particularly true in PACS medical imaging applications, which require high-resolution grayscale monitors to display images of diagnostic quality. While such monitors are ideal for diagnostic purposes, they are not very suitable for other non-diagnostic and general purposes.
In such cases, on-screen components and fonts that are scaled correctly for the high-resolution monitors will look huge and blown up on the low-resolution monitors. This is due to the DPI (Dots Per Inch) count on each monitor. The high-resolution monitors have a much higher DPI than the low resolution monitors. Hence, any component or font that has been specified to be, say 10 pixels (dots) wide and 10 pixels high, will appear smaller on the high-resolution monitors, but much larger on the low-resolution monitors. Thus, it would be preferable to have a system that adjusts the image size so that it is appropriate for the monitor on which it is displayed.
Also, a lot of different types of data may be viewed on an image workstation that has monitors of different resolutions. Some data may be more appropriate to a particular type of monitor than another type of data. A control program for a work station would preferably use the display areas on the monitors as efficiently as possible. It would be preferable to have a system that could display data on a monitor type that is most appropriate for that data.
The teachings hereinbelow extend to those embodiments which fall within the scope of the appended claims, regardless of whether they accomplish one or more of the above-mentioned needs or preferences.